


Dead Man Walking

by hyunshalo



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Death, Depression, Gen, Han - Freeform, Hwang - Freeform, LEE - Freeform, felix - Freeform, hyunjin, jisung - Freeform, skz - Freeform, stray kids - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:29:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23290045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyunshalo/pseuds/hyunshalo
Summary: T/W: mentions of violence, death, depression and alluding to suicide
Relationships: Friendship? Idk - Relationship
Kudos: 6





	Dead Man Walking

**Author's Note:**

> T/W: mentions of violence, death, depression and alluding to suicide

For most people, being clinically dead would suck. But Han Jisung dealt with it quite well. It didn’t cause him much of a hinderance to his daily schedule, I mean sure, he couldn’t leave the safety of his shadowed chamber, but he would scarcely do so anyway. Of course, being dead meant he had to make other sacrifices: his job, for example.   
Being an idol was tough when you were alive, never mind undead. He had to move out of his group’s dorm, relocating to somewhere more suitable for people like him. A quiet that most people would find unbearably mind worming brought peace to the young man, a peace he never knew he needed until he experienced it. It was oddly comforting. Somehow felt like it was made for him. The day that Jisung woke up a dead man, was the day his life began. 

It had been a year since Jisung died, thus a year since he had seen the real world. Unaware of and unbothered by the chaos that spewed the streets just outside his taped up window, which was only a couple feet parallel to his bed, relinquishing the room of any natural light. His once honey toned skin blanched to a warm ivory, his hair had grown exceptionally long, to where his bleached locks had reached his shoulders, his natural hair colour crowning through. He would cut it, but strangely he could never find any scissors.   
Jisung seldom felt bored, being stuck in such an isolation, especially as his friends would still make an effort to come and visit him. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw his parents, though. Most were sceptical of his claim of being a creature of the not-living. Some were concerned for him, unsure of what this meant. But, Jisung didn’t care. He confined himself in that room, manifesting his own world within the stark white walls.

A knock on the door sounded, and he sat up swiftly, the covers crumpling with his movements. He hadn’t arranged to meet anyone that day, so he paused with alertness, trying to hear movement outside his bedroom door. Nothing. Another noise of knuckle on wood travelled through the air, and he finally left his bed, gliding towards the entrance to let his uninvited guests in. “You couldn’t have called?”

“How did you know it was us?” The shorter boy chortled, gripping a brown paper bag in his grasp.

“He didn’t.” The taller boy answered, swiftly moving through the room. Scrunching up his face at the sour scent in the room, he glared at Jisung. “You couldn’t have opened the window?”

“Do you want me to die?” Jisung returned with a scoff, adding as an after thought. “Again.”

Hyunjin raised his eyebrows softly, seating himself at the bright green orange chair that was more of an eyesore than Jisung’s patterned pyjama bottoms. Felix smiled awkwardly, before he remembered the gift he had brought him. “Sung, I brought you a cheeseburger. From McDonald’s.”

Jisung approached his pink-haired friend, lowering his voice. “I know, I could smell it. I was waiting for you to give it to me.” Accepting the bag, Jisung tore it open before throwing the bun to the floor and picking out the lettuce and the cheese until it was nothing more than a single patty. “Thank you, for the generous offer my friend.” 

Hyunjin grimaced, looking away. He hated to see his best friend like this, a mere shell of the person he once was. “I see you’re still on your only-meat diet.”

“Well, I can’t get fresh human blood anywhere without people asking questions. So, animal meat is the next best thing.” Jisung shrugged, kicking out a tray of raw red meat, blood oozing from the folds of fat, from under his bed with his foot, which made the two boys gag. “I’m almost running out, I’ll need to restock when the sun sets.”

“Bro, that can’t be healthy for you.” Felix held back a retch, bringing his mask back up over his face. Jisung let out a patronising laugh. 

“Ah Lixie, haven’t you learnt by now? Blood is a vampire’s health.” Jisung grinned, almost sinisterly, at his friends, registering Hyunjin’s scoff. “How are the others? I haven’t seen them since I moved.”

Hyunjin refused to answer, causing Felix to sigh. “Everyone is fine, we’ve been busy working. You know how it is. And, um...” Felix hesitated, unsure if he should mention his next thought or if it would only open up still healing wounds. Jisung urged for him to continue, the light in his eyes fading as Felix finished his sentence. “Minho has been getting better.”

A heavy, choking silence surrounded them like fog, even Hyunjin was shocked at Felix’s words. They had always agreed to never speak of or even mention Minho’s name, in case it triggered Jisung and made him do something he would regret. Jisung stared at Felix, his gaze unwavering. “Oh. That’s good.”

Felix nodded slowly, his heartbeat speeding up rapidly. He used the adrenaline to continue, finally letting out the thoughts and feelings he had held back the past year while he had good news to share. “Yeah, he’s been going to a physiotherapist and they think in a couple of years, maybe, one day he could walk on crutches. It’s bringing back some happiness to the dorm.”

Jisung noted the hopeful tone in Felix’s voice and matched it with a grateful simper. “Wow, that’s really great. I’m surprised, actually. I didn’t think he would recover at all.”

“He fell three-storeys off a balcony.” Hyunjin’s voice cut through the atmosphere. “It’s a wonder he’s still alive.”

“I mean, I don’t believe in God- not anymore, at least.” Jisung chuckled light heartedly. “But it was obviously a miracle. Unless, he’s dead too and he just doesn’t realise it.”

“I still don’t understand how he managed to do that, though.” Hyunjin pondered, and Jisung rose from his seat on his bed bedside Felix, drifting closer to Hyunjin as he spoke. “I mean, there was a barrier. And Minho wouldn’t be that careless.”

“What are you implying, Hyunjin?” Jisung questioned, sounding curious and intrigued but the slight edge didn’t go unnoticed by the dark-haired boy sitting before him. Hyunjin slowly got up. 

“I’m not implying anything, I just think that the ‘facts’ don’t add up. You know Minho, you know him well. Do you think he could cause such a thing to happen to himself?” Hyunjin clicked his teeth. “Ah, well. I mean, I guess we never know what someone is capable of. Not until they’re pushed to the edge.”

The two were now face to face, causing Felix much confusion and anxiety. “Come on, guys. Let’s change the subject, sorry I brought it up. I was just so excited. You know, not only having to see Minho recover, but to see him finally smile again. Ah! Sorry, I’m doing it again-“

“I think you should stop playing Sherlock Holmes, Jinnie. Minho doesn’t remember anything from that night, he told me himself before I... changed. It was a drunken mistake gone wrong.”

“He wasn’t drunk.”

“Well, he was on something.”

“The facts don’t add up.” Hyunjin pushed.

“Maybe the floor was slippery. Or the barrier was loose.”

“No, the police checked. It was none of that, it doesn’t make any se-“

“Maybe he wanted to die.”

Hyunjin’s face moulded to a soft shock, finding it hard to comprehend that this was the same Han Jisung who cried because Chan wouldn’t talk to him for a week. His eyes had darkened scarily, almost like there was no soul behind them. Although, he was dead, right? He shouldn’t have a soul. Maybe he never did.

“I think you guys should go. I’m getting tired.” Jisung spoke softly, his voice maintaining its calm and cheerful tone but his eyes remained hard as he was nose to nose with Hyunjin. “Thank you for coming. I hope you’ll visit me again soon.”

“So...” Felix took in a deep breath, once both he and Hyunjin had left the room. He wrung his clammy hands, staring at the doctor in apprehension. “Is he getting any better?”

Dr. Jung sighed, flipping over the white sheet of paper covered with his scrawl in blue fountain pen. “His most recent blood test shows he hasn’t been taking his medication.”

Hyunjin closed his eyes in frustration. “Can’t you, like, put it in his IV drip?”

The doctor gave him a look. “That’s not how it works, Mr Hwang. I understand you’re upset and worried for your friend’s wellbeing, but we are doing our best to maintain him in our care.”

“Doing your best? This is what you call doing your best? My best friend thinks he’s a fucking vampire, he doesn’t eat food, he doesn’t drink water, he wants to drink blood and eat raw meat- Doctor, please. There has to be something else-“

“Cotard’s syndrome is very tricky, Mr Hwang. If Mr Han refuses to take his medication, there’s nothing much else we can do other than sedate him and keep him healthy through IV drips. Our nurses have tried to feed him properly in the past, he just gets violent unless we give him what he wants.” Whenever the nurses would sedate him, they would leave cooked meat disguised as raw on the platter under his bed, so he would wake up and assume he went hunting the night prior. “To be frank with you, I haven’t dealt with many cases of people with this condition, granted it’s quite rare. But never have I encountered someone thinking they were a vampire. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here, but we are doing our best. Now, if you could please vacate the area, visiting hours are over.” The doctor let out a heavy breath, glancing back at his clipboard while walking away in the opposite direction.

“You little fucker-“ Felix grabbed Hyunjin, steering him through the waiting room, and out of the hospital in to the crisp spring air. 

“Hey, don’t worry yourself out. Jisung will be fine.” Felix tried to reassure, but Hyunjin shrugged his arm off his shoulder aggressively, moving away.

“We thought he was fine for months. But he wasn’t. We thought he was eating properly. But he wasn’t. We thought he was happy. But-“

“Yes, okay, all of that is true. But we can’t blame ourselves.” Felix tried to reason, his voice soft and tender. “We weren’t to know that Jisung had been eating raw rabbits he found in the forest that he skinned himself. Or that he tried to murder Chan because he thought his blood would taste sweet.” Chan still wakes up from what little sleep he manages to get, screaming about Jisung standing over his laid out figure holding a pitchfork to his neck.

Hyunjin scoffed, brushing his fallen hair out of his eyes, his hands trembling as he grazed his back down the brick wall. “I just don’t want to find him like that again. Laying on the fooor, unconscious. Helpless.” Hyunjin knew something the others didn’t know. That Minho didn’t just fall. That Jisung was the reason Minho couldn’t walk anymore. But he couldn’t resent him for it, not anymore. Not after he relentlessly hammered Jisung for being so reckless. The guilt, the blame, that’s what caused Jisung’s downward spiral in to depression. That’s what caused him to develop this condition. And Hyunjin was the one that got Jisung admitted in to the hospital, unbeknownst to him as, due to the countless prescriptions he was rejecting, he really believed he was something that belonged in a teen romance novel. The part that Jisung didn’t know, was that Hyunjin had a strong gut feeling it wasn’t an accident.

“It’s okay to be scared, we’re all scared.” Felix fell to his level, bringing his friend in to a hug as Hyunjin sobbed. It was hard for Felix too. Every visit he hoped, he prayed, that Jisung would get better, that he’d be himself again. But every time, his hope faltered a little more, like a flower wilting, losing its petals one by one. “He’s still the same Jisung who doesn’t wash his feet when he comes home. And watches those seriously boring nature documentaries on YouTube. He’s still that Jisung, the funniest guy we know. Our brother. He’s just healing right now, and he will. He will heal. And he’ll come back to us.” With erratic breath, Hyunjin nodded and Felix helped him up, guiding him out on to the street so they could go home, the thought of coming back in a couple weeks’ time and doing this all over again leaving a daunting hanging feeling at the nape of Hyunjin’s neck, almost like someone was pulling on a tether. 

Inside the hospital, a woman wearing a white nurse’s outfit with her blue hair slicked back in to a bun had entered the room Jisung was residing in. Placing her box of syringes on to the over-bed table with a clang, her eyes fell warily on Jisung, who was seemingly asleep, his features neutral. His body was relaxed, almost serene, like he was just a normal teenaged boy again. She kept her eyes on him, opening up the box and bringing out a hypodermic needle, attaching it to the now full syringe. Squeezing all the air out of it, she pierced his bare arm, not even receiving a wince as a reaction. Once she was done, she threw away the syringe, closing up the box. Her feet stayed planted. She stared at Jisung. Stared at his face. His closed eyes.

“I know what you’re doing.” She spoke quietly, the young man laying before her staying still. “I know you’re not really a vampire, obviously. And I know you’re not really sick. Well... not in that way, at least. Just tell me why.”   
She would say this every time she entered his room, hoping that one day he might crack. But, Jisung stayed unmoving, even long after the woman had left the room, for minutes, hours. He remained in his hospital bed, upholding the pretence he was sedated, the ghost of a smirk on his pale lips as the security camera panned over him.


End file.
